Pippin had made The Cat a great-grandmother and Flora a grandmother when she gave birth to Pascha and Pascal in the garden on Easter Saturday of the previous year. It was Pippin’s first litter and she was a naturally good mother. She assiduously moved her kittens every day to keep them out of the direct sun; she played with them, washed them and fed them, and encouraged them to mix with the other kittens in the garden. Pascal and Pascha were close, but outgoing and eager to explore.

Sadly, the kittens were not immune from the viruses which swept round the cat population that spring and summer, and both had been left partially sighted following a virus when they were new-born. And then the summer virus swept through the Garden Family and claimed Pascal.

Pascha, however, was untouched. He was almost definitely Izit’s son and destined to be a big, sturdy cat, just like his father. In the following photo, Pascha was only seven months old but already the size of some one-year-old cats.

Growing up with impaired vision meant nothing to Pascha, and he played and explored along with his young companions, not knowing that their world probably looked quite different from his. He was inquisitive and curious, just like every other cat of his age.

One thing that he did know, however, was that he hated the twice-daily routine of eye-cleaning and eye-drops which was necessary to maintain his vision and, as he grew bigger and stronger, he made the humans’ task of catching him twice a day increasingly difficult.

Like any other young cat, he wanted to explore. He climbed the olive tree, patrolled the top of the high garden walls and discovered the first-floor terrace, all much to the humans’ consternation – and all without any accidents or injuries.

But one place Pascha never went was the fields, and we had no idea of what his impaired eyesight told him lay beyond the garden walls. So it was a worry when, one morning, he was missing at breakfast. We called him repeatedly, scoured the fields, walked up and down the road calling and looking, but to no avail. We circulated photos of him to the local cat feeders and rescues, but no one had seen him. Maybe he had fallen off the high wall or out of a tree and ended up in the field – who knew? But at the age of just nine or ten months and with his bad eyesight, he was not best equipped to survive on his own.

Five days passed with no sign and then, there Pascha was at breakfast, calm and collected as though he had never been away. He didn’t look thinner or dehydrated, he had no scratches, and he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. And when we asked him where he’d been, he never gave us a single clue, simply averting his head to indicate the matter was now closed.